Hoops Time!

A new basketball season is upon us. 

We've got a fantasy draft coming up this evening, so I thought I'd show off some cards I found in a blaster box yesterday. This 2016-17 Panini NBA Hoops box is the first new basketball purchase in quite some time, and I think they might be the only cards from the new season on the market so far.

The first card out of the first pack was Dame himself. Not a bad start.

There are blue parallel's-a-plenty to be found. I was hoping the Blazers would be the team to sign Cole Aldrich, and not the Timberwolves, but Portland ended up with a different quality signing to bolster the post position.

This might be Panini admitting there's not enough action captured on their base cards. Blah blah Melo blah.

Rookie cards are some my least favorite things about basketball cards (and football for that matter), with all of their awkward posed shots. Domantas Sabonis is the son of Blazers favorite and all around basketball god Arvydas.

Here's the coverboy modeling his new jersey.

The Blazers threw big money at the enigmatic Evan Turner. We'll see how that goes. Hopefully well?

Here's another posed shot, of Festus Ezeli standing in front of a white sheet. Festus played for the Warriors superteams of late.

Gerald Henderson was one-and-done with the Blazers, signing with Philly in the offseason. He's pictured here in a Portland uniform, so it stays in my collection. Amusingly enough, the "traded" line on the front of the card references his trade to Portland (last year) and not his signing with the 76ers.

This is awful.

Jamal Murray starred at Kentucky and should figure heavily in Denver's plans in the near future, if not immediately.

The future is apparently an old photolens.

I thought we'd gotten rid of this guy once and for all, but apparently there's a multi-platform insert set seeing a bunch of these cards in the regular NBA Hoops product and more inserted in the NBA 2K17 video games themselves.

Layup or rebound?

#15 there is caught staring at Olynyk's hair.

Can we ditch the "Los Bulls" uniforms and similar ones that other teams roll out? There's got to be a better way to honor cultures than mangling their language in a cheap ploy to sell jerseys. Gasol has moved on to Los Spurs now.

This insert looks straight out of the '90s.

Finally, here is my promised one-per-pack (on average) autograph or memorabilia card. Jerami Grant is the son of former Blazer Harvey Grant and was born here while his father played in Portland. Philly has a ton of unproven talented young players, but Grant started a significant portion of his team's games last season.